Restaurants, salons, gym in Bay Area continue to be mostly shut down from spring to fall. We are back to times without all these conveniences.
We do not need an office, I work from home. We do not need a gym, I can do stretching at home and jog in the neighbourhood.
We prepare our own meals. Lunch is often a choice of instant noodles, dumplings sandwiches, cereal that I can prepare quickly. Dinner time, my husband cooks a complete meal as I finish up my work from home. On weekends, we try some new dishes to cook. My son has made ratatouille and pancakes from wheat; my daughter has made Dutch baby pancake with spiced plum, baked curry buns and pineapple buns; I have made paella rice, oyakodon, soy sauce chicken, my husband has created the sous vide duck leg and bbq pork . Cooking is a habit forming and is rewarding. Our kitchen pantry is all stocked up with tens of ingredients and seasonings; home cooking becomes more convenient than ordering take outs (bad for restaurant owners). We also have done gardening and harvested carrots, kale, rosemary mint as well as beet. I have used mint to make tea with honey, interesting but not gourmet. Carrots are so fresh to eat right after harvest. Most of the time, the harvests are used to cook or make soup.
We made our mask from bandana at the beginning when masks are nowhere to be brought. It was functional but not comfortable and we stopped making ours once the masks are available for sale. When the tissue paper was in high demand, we learned that the lamb’s ear that grows quickly in our garden could be a substitute, we never get to use that.
My hair used to be a low maintenance activity, still we need to cut it once in a while. With the salon shutdown stretching from weeks to months , the hair becomes more of a concern, so we also learn to help each other to do each other haircuts at home. That brought back memories of a haircutting class I took long long time ago. That class took place in a rather untidy studio inside an unassuming building in an average neighborhood. Every student was given a head with a full body of hair, every lesson we would trim it and practice different techniques. My fingers were clumsy, often I could not hold on to the hair, and ended up with a head that looks quite disastrous. It was humbling as I observed the better looking heads in the hands of my classmates. Fortunately the head was not for a real person, I could not remember if I finished the class or it looked so bad that I just could not continue with it, probably the latter. I concluded that I did not have the talent, that was in the years that we believed talents, not passions, are needed to be successful. With the pandemic, I just did a haircut for my husband using the modern multi grooming trimmers. The result looks reasonably tidy and neat , he can go meet friends though it is better to have no one looking closely. And what is the difference between a good haircut and a bad one ? Two weeks (hahahaha).
Amidst the adaptation and making the best out of the situation, I miss my hairdresser a bit more than the salon . I miss the coworkers at work more than work. I miss meeting friends in restaurants more than the restaurants. I miss going to places more than the hotels or airports. Nature once again reminds us of its prowess, and I miss nature and the outdoors so very badly.
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From Toni Morrison : its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is a required reading to more deeply understand “Black Lives Matter”, a phrase so frequently heard in recent months. The book is a long letter from a father to his son, depicting what life has been like and will be like for the black people in the States. From the author’s perspective, race is the child of racism and the American dream is reserved for the white people. Black people have been intentionally excluded from the dream. In his first hand depiction, the author learns to live in fear, learns how to disguise his fear with what we come to know as typical black people behavior in the inner city, how he finds camaraderie in Howard university and a new sense of freedom in Paris. Many names, events and places references are unknown to me. As I Google them up, I am shocked at how many of these dark sides have been buried. If you are affected by the recent social events on the brutality towards the black people and want a deeper understanding of their history and their struggle, this is a must read.
I have always wanted to join a book club. I finally joined one and facilitated some discussion. It has been fun and educational. This first book we read is about how to make your already successful career to be more successful. It is full of the author’s coaching experiences, with many CEO-to-be clients. My book club discussed the 20 habits that the very successful business people may need to let go for further successes. My book club members are not CEO-to-be yet, and we feel many of these habits are the reasons to be successful, we need to be successful first before thinking of more successes. I had a chance to ask the author this same question and his response has been, at the beginning, we need to care about those habits such as winning, adding value; as our career progresses, we start letting go of some of these habits. Because of the book club, I enjoy the book more and feel that it helps to retain the learning.
oliviatamccue 